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Trump just found the worst way to regulate AI

The real danger in Trump’s crackdown on Anthropic’s newest AI model.

In a sense, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is getting what he wanted.

Amodei has long argued that AI is becoming dangerously powerful — and thus, that regulatory restrictions on the technology are urgently needed. In an essay published last week, Amodei wrote that the release of cutting-edge AI models “should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety” if they fail to meet strict security standards.

Alas, asking the current US government to assume sweeping new regulatory authorities is a bit like wishing on a monkey’s paw (or, for the zoomers in the audience, a “One Wish Willow”): Days after Amodei’s manifesto went live, Anthropic’s latest AI model went dark, on orders from Uncle Sam.

That model — known as “Mythos” in its unrestricted form and “Fable” in its heavily bounded, publicly accessible one — represents a major technical achievement. On conventional benchmarks of AI performance, it greatly outscored all of its predecessors. And during its brief public tenure, countless users marveled at its abilities. In my own tests of its journalistic skills, Fable proved 30 percent more effective than past models at inducing feelings of obsolescence and existential dread.

Anthropic initially shared Mythos exclusively with vetted public and private organizations, so that they could steel their cyber-defenses against its capabilities. Before releasing its new model to the general public, Anthropic lined it with strict safety guardrails: Fable will refuse to answer virtually any query about cybersecurity or biology (to prevent its use for hacking and bioterrorism).

The White House deemed this insufficient. On Friday, after learning that Fable contained a potential security vulnerability, the administration imposed export controls on the model — making it unlawful for Anthropic to provide Fable to any foreign national, including its own immigrant employees. In practice, this meant that Anthropic needed to take Fable offline completely (AI models still can’t scan their users’ brains and confirm their nationalities).

In other words: Our government has claimed the power to block or take down AI models that threaten public safety.

But Amodei isn’t celebrating. And other proponents of AI safety probably shouldn’t either.

True, the White House’s initial, laissez-faire approach to AI governance now lies in ruins. Emerging from the rubble, however, is the worst kind of regulatory........

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